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Sociolinguistics from the Periphery "presents a fascinating book about change: shifting political, economic and cultural conditions; ephemeral, sometimes even seasonal, multilingualism; and altered imaginaries for minority and indigenous languages and their users."

Neef, Neijt and Sproat present a volume that consists of ten papers whichmostly grew out of talks given at the international workshop WritingLanguage in Nijmegen on August 28-30 2000. In their introduction theyidentify a set of general questions that are covered in the papers fromdifferent perspectives. The main questions concerns the relation ofwriting and spoken language, more specifically the questions of hownatural writing is, the notion of orthographic depth, the relation betweenorthography as an object of research for theoretical linguistics and thepsycholinguistic investigation of its use and the processes involved. Intheir introduction, the editors raise the question of what kind ofconstraints are involved in reading and writing and if non-localconstraints are necessary to adequately describe spelling and reading. Thestatus of orthography and writing is addressed in asking whether writingis derived from spoken language or if it follows autonomous rules.Finally, they give attention to the balance between reading and writingand state that reader- and reading-oriented models of orthography might bemore suitable than writer- or writing-oriented ones.

The papers are organized in four sections. Each of them investigates onephenomenon or theoretical question from different point of views anddifferent research backgrounds.

CONTENTS

Section 1: Consistency

Anneke Neijt - The Interfaces of Writing and Grammar

Neijt addresses Sproat's consistency hypothesis (Sproat 2000) and appliesit to Dutch spelling. Dutch has a deep orthography, e.g. final devoicing,it shows differences between native and non-native words, and is bestdescribed by a two-step derivation: phoneme-to-grapheme conversion ofmorphemes are followed by graphotactic rules. Neijt tries to show thatphoneme-to-grapheme rules are based on information from different levels.She demonstrates that the Orthographically Relevant Level (ORL) isdifferent for native and non-native words. For phoneme-to-grapheme rulesshe argues that some morphemes are spelled according to an underlyingphonemic form while some require a more superficial level. This can beseen as contradicting the consistency hypothesis. Graphotactic rules aspresented by Nunn are not autonomous but need orthographical andphonological information as shown for diaeresis placement, syllabificationdegemination and stress representation. Neijt concludes that Dutchorthography cannot easily be described by the consistency hypothesis.Information from different levels of language processing is involved.

Sproat directly replies to the aforementioned article and tries to showthat the examples given by Neijt do not violate the ConsistencyHypothesis. The devoicing examples given might stem from two differentprocesses, one applied before, the other applied after the ORL. Stressinformation might be encoded by diacritics that don't show up in surfaceorthography - Sproat argues that this solution is not worse than lookingat phonology and orthography simultaneously. The different rules fordifferent parts of orthography (Latinate vs. native part) observed byNeijt are categorized differently by Sproat: one is an obligatorymorpho-phonological alternation, the other one an optional phoneticalternation. In other cases, etymological information is needed to decidewhich set of rules is to be taken. This information must somehow beencoded in the representation. For the need of information from differentlevels, such as syntax or semantics, Sproat states that "level" means"stage in derivational process", not "level in some hierarchy". So, allinformation accessible at a given stage of the derivational process ispresent in the ORL, too. Sproat finally asks why we should expect thatconsistency holds. He argues that orthography should be as natural aspossible to be usable. If orthography was not, two things could happen tore-establish consistency: spelling changes and spelling pronunciations.

The authors propose a new methodology for measuring bidirectionalconsistency of spelling-sound correspondences in psycholinguisticresearch. In contrast to other methods, the proposed one would be suitablefor both monosyllabic and polysyllabic words. They state that the findingsabout the consistency of a spelling system vary on the size of units(letter, rhymes, sliding windows, sublexical linguistic units). Thus, aflexible methodology is necessary for several application domains (speechsynthesis, machine learning). Their new method splits written and spokenwords in units like onset, nucleus and coda. Then, body (onset + nucleus)and rime (nucleus + coda) are compared with respect to consistency ofmapping. For polysyllabic words, ambisyllabic segments and variablesyllable boundaries may impose problems, so coda and following onset aretreated as one unit. In the next step overlapping sublexical units (OSLUs)are constructed as pairs, triples, or quadruples etc. of adjacentsublexical units. Each of these patterns is compared to estimateconsistency. The result is a list of consistency scores for each OSLU anda combined consistency score for the entire word. The authors show thattheir method is more accurate than other methods as it is able todisambiguate a lot of otherwise inconsistent spellings or pronunciations.They claim that the proposed method is language independent as well aseasy to compute. Finally, the results of a sample analysis are presentedfor Dutch and German.

Ravid and Gillis present the results of studies on teachers' knowledgeabout morphological and morpho-phonological cues in spelling homophonousgraphemes in Hebrew and Dutch. They ask two questions: Is children'sknowledge and use of morphology matched by their teachers' ability toexplain spellings and what differences exist between Belgian and Israeliteachers' ability to explain spellings. In a first study children weregiven a spelling test with 4 sets of 8 homophonous items, with differentstatus of recoverability. For Hebrew the predictions were matched: fewererrors for words with more cues, more errors for words with fewer cues.For Dutch speaking children, the predictions were not met as they scoredrelatively low on morphologically motivated sets and relatively high onmorphologically unmotivated sets. The author present a possibleexplanation: Growing up with a morphologically complex language likeHebrew makes it easier to use morphological clues. Alternative explanationcould concern the teachers' knowledge about spelling rules.In a second study the items from the children's test were randomized andpresented to teachers in a pairing task and a motivation of choice task.In the pairing task, the expectations from the children's experiments werenot matched. Belgian teachers have been able to identify the pairs, Hebrewteachers had greater difficulties. In the motivation task, Belgianteachers scored better than Hebrew. For all Hebrew results, students ofteachers training colleges scored lower than university students, for theDutch results both groups had comparable results. The result of this studyis that the teachers' metalinguistic knowledge of spelling patterns is amirror image of children's performance. A possible explanation could bethat the acquisition of language patterns and rules is implicit andnatural. Metalinguistic explanation has to be learned and is difficult.Teachers have to find simple rules to teach for complex rules. This iseasier for Dutch than for Hebrew. A list of the test items used concludesthe article.

Van Heuven presents a study on the effects of diaeresis in Dutch spellingon the recognition of words. As Dutch words can contain long sequences ofvowel letters, the diaeresis is used to indicate beginning of syllable.The guiding question for the study was how the diaeresis affects thevisual word recognition process, and whether the proper use of diaeresisenables adult Dutch readers to recognize words more efficiently. Theexperimental setting was to present words with correct use of diaeresisand three types of diaeresis errors: omission, addition and transposition.Subjects were asked to decide whether a string presented is a Dutch wordor not. The stimulus material consisted of 240 letter strings, 120 ofwhich were existing Dutch words (40 filler, 80 crucial words), 120orthographically and phonologically legal Dutch nonsense strings. Threeversions of the crucial words have been used: the correct spelling, aspelling with diaeresis error, and a spelling with a minimal spellingerror. These versions have been presented in an evenly mixed way for eachof 120 students.The results of the experiment show a clear effect of error type: thecorrect versions and the versions with diaeresis errors do not differwhereas misspelling score significantly lower. The length of the vowelsequence has a small effect, but has no interaction with the error type,i.e. both diaeresis errors (omission and transposition) have no effect.For the insertion of illegal diaeresis the correct acceptance rate dropssignificantly. The addition of diaeresis detracts from the recognizabilityof the word form but the elimination of diaeresis does not create problemsfor the experienced adult reader. The author concludes that it is possiblethat the diaeresis, however, is of considerable help for inexperiencedreaders and learners of Dutch orthography.

Jochen Geilfu��-Wolfgang: Optimal Hyphenation

The author presents a constraint based modelling of German hyphenation inan optimality-theoretic framework. He gives structural well-formednessconstraints for orthographic syllables that to not refer to phonologicalsyllables. For his investigation he uses data from the 2000 edition ofDuden Rechtschreibung. The author shows that eight properly rankedconstraints yield correct results for all the cases in question:- Ons: orthographic syllables begin with a consonant grapheme- Nuc: orthographic syllables have a vowel grapheme- *ComplexOns: orthographic syllables have at most one consonant graphemeat their left edge- *ComplexNuc: orthographic syllables have at most one vowel grapheme- AlignL: Left edges of stems and morphological words coincide with leftedges of orthographic syllables- RecoverGrapheme: graphemes cannot be split- Margins: Every margin of an orthographic syllable is a possible marginof an orthographic wordThe author states that with this modelling orthographic syllables aredefined and related to the question of complex or noncomplex graphemes,graphotactical constraints and morphological information, but notphonological information. He concludes that word splitting in German isbased on orthographic syllables.

Ursula Bredel: The Dash in German

In contrast to the usual characterization of the dash (Gedankenstrich) inGerman orthography as a polyfunctional mark, the author suggests a uniformcharacterization. She motivates this approach by the observation that bothsyntactical and intonational explanations of punctuation omit the aspectof linking as a medium-specific property. The dash has earlier beencharacterized as a polyfunctional punctuation mark, that functions on agrammatical level, on a text organizational level or on a pragmatic level.Attempts to characterize the dash uniformly compromise the notions of"interrupting" and "changing". Bredel gives an overview of development ofthe dash in German writing. Historically, it had two different functions:marking omissions, marking end of lines. The modern uses of dash have incommon a certain change of focus. Bredel shows this notion forparantheses, change of speaker/topic and announcements. She concludes thedash prepares the reader to perceive subsequent material under changedfocus.

4. Sharpening in German

Christina Noack: Regularities in German Orthography: A Computer-BasedComparison of Different Approaches to Sharpening

Noack uses a computational modelling of orthographic rules to determineconsistency of German orthography, namely the phenomenon of sharpening(consonant letter doubling). Three different rule proposals areinvestigated: a morpho-phonological approach proposed by Adelung in 1788,a syllable-based approach proposed by Maas in 1997 and a segment-basedapproach from the official rules in 1902. A word list, taken fromAdelung's "Kleines W��rterbuch" was taken as a corpus for a simulation ofthe three rules. The rule-based data processing system ortho 3.0 takesphonological, morphological and lexical information about words as inputand generates a spelling using a dynamic rule apparatus. The results ofthe experiment show that the three rules yield different kinds ofmistakes. The morpho-phonological and the syllable-based approaches provedsuperior to the segment based approach. The author states that sharpeningin German not simply marks shortness but marks units which embrace severalphonemes, namely syllables.

Martin Neef: The Reader's View: Sharpening in German

Neef presents a way to describe writing systems from a reader'sperspective. He describes reader-based orthography as output-oriented, asit asks for constraints on written forms. The "recoding principle" iscentral to this approach: The written form has to make possible anunambigiguous recoding of the spoken form. Neef summarizes writer-basedanalyses of sharpening and especially addresses the problem ofprosodically determined explicit forms which sometimes are marginal andsometimes do not exist at all. A reader-based sharpening constraint isproposed: "If in a word less than two consonant letters follow adjacentlya simple vowel graph, this vowel graph must not correspond to acentralized vowel". Neef demonstrates that this constraint covers largeparts of German orthography and systematically lists exceptions. GermanOrthography is highly inconsistent in the marking of vowel quality if thevowel grapheme is followed by more than one consonant letter. Neef callsthis orthographic underspecification. Examining the question whetherstress influences the marking of sharpening, Neef modifies his sharpeningconstraint to allow readings as centralized vowels in unstressedvord-final syllables. Neef concludes that "writing systems aim at beingconsistent not for the writer but for the reader."

Lindauer investigates the question how writers make use of their implicitphonological knowledge. He describes the two main explanations forsharpening (see Noack and Neef) and then focuses on two phenomena in SwissGerman: spelling of ss and a common misspelling of unnecessary doubling offricative consonants after long vowels. Swiss German permits lightstressed syllables in contrast to standard German, but this vanishes whenspeakers speak Swiss Standard German. There are true geminates in SwissGerman and Swiss Standard German which are best audible with fricatives.Because these geminates also occur after long vowels, a syllable basedrule for sharpening leads to mistakes. According to Lindauer, a stem basedrule is much more suitable for teaching marking of sharpening to SwissGerman speaking learners. This leads to the conclusion that it isappropriate to teach different spelling rules for different regions thatshow different phonological phenomena.

EVALUATION

The papers in this volume cover a wide range of current research topicsand offer various linguistic approaches to analyse writing systems andtheir use. However, three limitations to this broad coverage apply: (1)The workshop on which most of the papers have been presented wasespecially rewarding because it brought together researchers and researchresults from both theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics. Most ofthe psycholinguistic papers have been published separately in a specialissue of Journal of Written Language and Literacy. So the volume is morefocussed on theoretical linguistics than the workshop was. On the otherhand this circumstance made it possible to present a more coherent set ofpapers that relate to other in many points. (2) Most of the papers dealwith data and questions from German and Dutch, two relatively similarwriting systems. This leads to a good overview of current research onthese two writing systems and makes the volume especially interesting forlinguists interested in German and Dutch and delivers detailed analyses ofsome core phenomena from these orthographies. As a drawback, the papersand thus the entire volume lacks a bit of a cross-linguistic perspective.Some interesting insights into comparative research of very differentwriting systems are given by the paper from Ravid and Gillis and Ravid,for example. (3) The questions raised in the introduction are mostly notaddressed directly in the papers. From a more general point of view, thethree papers contributed by the editors are the most interesting. Most ofthe other papers deal with relatively specific questions and make itsometimes difficult to relate them to the guiding questions of the book.This, of course, is inevitable given the nature of the volume as acollection of workshop contributions.

All in all, Neef, Neijt and Sproat present an up-to-date collection ofpapers that diverge in methodology, background and generality. The book isespecially interesting for linguists interested in current discussions ofGerman and Dutch orthography but also shows fields of future research onthe more general question of the relation of writing and spoken language.